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Open-Source Backers March on Washington

By Ashlee Vance July 23, 2009 2:03 pmJuly 23, 2009 2:03 pm

Update | 7:43 p.m. Correcting spelling of Roger Burkhardt’s name.

Look out, lobbyists: Here come the open-source zealots.

Some of the world’s largest technology companies have banded together in a bid to push open-source software on the United States government. They’ve formed a group called Open Source for America, which seeks to make sure that government agencies at least consider open-source software as an option in their buying decisions. The big, rather timely pitch behind this move is that open-source applications can help save the government money.

“The market for open-source software is growing dramatically, but there still needs to be education around understanding how to get the most out of it,” said Roger Burkhardt, the chief executive of Ingres, a maker of an open-source database, who is on the Open Source for America board of advisers. “There are quirks to the government procurement process that need to be addressed.”

Open-source companies often give away their base product and then charge customers for support and other services. This model, according to Mr. Burkhardt, can perplex government bodies used to buying software upfront. In addition, the group hopes to make sure that open-source software receives the necessary federal nods for use in things like drug approvals and high-security computing projects.

Some of the initial members of the organization include Google, Oracle, Red Hat, Advanced Micro Devices, Novell and Canonical. A host of smaller open-source software makers are involved as well.

The board of advisers is more or less a Who’s Who of open-source advocates, including Eben Moglen, a prominent lawyer; Mark Shuttleworth, the chief executive of Canonical; Michael Tiemann, a vice president at Red Hat; and Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation.

The government has aimed a large amount of its stimulus money at technology projects, and the open-source backers hope to get their fair share of that cash. More broadly, they would like the United States to follow countries in Europe and Asia with better defined guidelines around buying software.

The open-source “movement,” if you will, continues to have some grass-roots momentum, with developers working without charge to improve projects like the Linux operating system and Mozilla Web browser. That said, large companies have come to dominate the open-source world. I.B.M., Google, Intel and others employ many of the best known open-source programmers and have made the software a key part of their internal operations as well as their business strategies.

Regardless of their affiliation, open-source types have demonstrated a fondness for backing free software in a vocal, often argumentative manner. They’re sure to give the lobbyists working for proprietary software companies a run for their vocal cords and money.

I’m no open source zealot, but you have to assume that most government computers could do everything they need to do on open source software. Paying the Wintel tax amounts to a misappropriation of funds. I wonder what government agencies pay for large numbers of Windows licenses.

“That said, large companies have come to dominate the open-source world. I.B.M., Google, Intel and others employ many of the best known open-source programmers and have made the software a key part of their internal operations as well as their business strategies.”

This is backwards. IBM, Google and Intel are consumers of open source software that other entities make. Even Android was developed by another company before Google bought it out. And Android itself is built on the Linux kernel and various tools and libraries developed by the open-source community. Obviously when companies need to tailor open source software to their own objectives they need to hire open source developers, but that doesn’t mean that major corporations are in any way major contributors to the open source software community (on the contrary, even much of the software that they develop for open-source platforms ends up being partly or mostly proprietary anyway).

I’m not so sure your reasoning is spot on here. Google and Intel, for example, employ some of the main contributors to Linux and the people who oversee the development of the kernel alongside Linus Torvalds. While they work on other projects as well, these people are paid to refine Linux as a whole, often in a way that matches up with their employers’ long-term goals.

Not quite on topic, but we had an IT audit last week.The audit mentioned that our use of “open source” software for anti-virus could be a risk. The software we use is free as in free-beer (gratis), but it’s not open-source. Interesting confusion, I thought. The auditor’s concern was over and release-management. This, where all new computers use Vista (talking about release management).

I worked this exact issue 5 yrs ago. We got promises from the OMB CIO that there would be no religious wars. The feds also understood the security implications of having one operating system be used at the expense of all others.

I don’t know what’s changed to want this group to be started? Open source not being adopted fast enough?

Open source software advocates are those who want to make governments live up to the promise of data freedom: data that is able to be scrutinized by public advocates, transfered between its users(citizens, states, school systems), and in the process save lots of money, time and effort for everybody involved. its ‘change I can believe it’! To state that they are zealots is suggest that this is the wrong approach to take when trying to initiate change. Our founding fathers were zealots for freedome they same way Open source software advocate are. And they both expecting to money out of the deal and jobs, just like other large propriety software giants are. The only difference is that at the end of the day, with Open source, you get freedom for all.

I’ll tell you one open-source program that the feds are using right now extensively, and that’s R. They’ve dropped SAS at most of the agencies I work with. SAS has cleverly responded by getting even more restrictive with their license agreements, so I’d expect that to continue.

I was running a machine with Ubuntu on it at a recent meeting, and a higher-up analyst knew exactly what it was. So there’s some growing awareness there.

I worked on wxWidgets which is open source for a federal agency, they are still using it.
It’s great stuff and due to it’s transparency, bugs and security holes are fixed very quickly! Something like OpenOffice saves money and works very well. Economics is not static and new modes of work, profit, and thinking, are wonderful results of the new information age!

Many government agencies make extensive use of some open source software, like Apache and Linux on their servers. What they have not done is put much in the way of open source software on the average user’s desktop. Heck, most federal government agencies still have IE6 as the only allowed web browser, despite its flaws and age.

#9 is the least thought out post I’ve seen on NYT in a long time. Unworthy of engagement.

As a GNU/Linux user for the past 8 years, I still use a virtual Windows drive for Powerpoint and Excel over Open Office’s offerings because they seem much easier to use. This may be because I learned the Microsoft apps or because the OpenOffice apps aren’t quite there yet. Openoffice text is fine.

I think something like Claws Mail is superior to Outlook. Some might prefer Evolution, but I’ve never liked it.

The security advantages are pretty clear in Linux’s favor.

One day, we will have a sane discussion about OS and use the best tools, regardless of provider.

I made the switch from Windows XP to Ubuntu (Jaunty 9.04 at present) more than 6 months ago. I must say that I get bored with Ubuntu simply because I do not have to do maintenance on it so often. All I do is start it up and use it for whatever. No complaints otherwise.

Most people who use open source aren’t zealots. They use it because it works, it’s cheaper, it’s more profitable, etc. It’s a pragmatic decision. Ashlee Vance may think otherwise but apparently the management at the NYT does not, presumably because open source is a big part of solution to moving the traditional new paper business to a sustainable business model.

“…open-source code — is critical at The Times….The Times is actively embracing open-source technologies (PHP, Apache, MySQL, to name a few) with the goal of switching most of the site to open source over the next few years.”

Nice to see the foundation of OSA (Open Source for America) get coverage in the Times. The new organization’s mission statement cites three overarching goals:

1) To help government to use open source software.

This must be about adapting rules and regulations so that great open source software isn’t automatically excluded because it’s not made the same way as proprietary software.

2) To get a dialogue going between government and open source project, so government can get what it needs.

This is exciting: if state, local, and national government buy into the open source process, that could bring a lot of ideas, money, and manpower to computer programs that are developed by communities as well as by corporations.

3) To communicate the ideas behind open source software to people in government.

This is also exciting. The government shares (or should share) common principles with the open source way of doing things. It would be great if government found methods to adopt and use from successful open source projects.

It’s true that there are a lot of blowhards and “zealots” ranting on the web about free and open source software. The people involved in this project, though, are brilliant engineers, successful business-people, and sober academics. They’re bright, civically engaged people. It’s great if they’re getting together as a group to start a dialogue with government.

Here it comes, the GOS (Government Operating System). Look, I’m all for open source software. If it fits your project, government or otherwise then use it. But once the government starts doling out money to develop “free” software then they get to decide who gets the money and who doesn’t. They also will end up choosing to use the software that they paid for. That means open source software not paid for by the government and private software will be regulated out.\
If you want to write open source software, find a company to pay you to do it or do it on your own time. Government money will eventually ruin a good thing.

Open source is a politcial mass movement with an army of followers who will propagandize and promote their product and slander competators and critics on behalf of big corpororations, with impunity. It is a marketing buzzword that implies a bogus moral superiority for companies like IBM and Oracle and Google, even if their primary product is closed-source software.

Open source distorts the market place by artificially underminding the value of software and taking away the freedom of good programmers to make money selling their wares. Do something innovative, spend money on research, open sourcers will reverse engineer it and then lobby against your original product. It leaves room only for profit in the sale of services or hardware, thus privilaging those corporations. And for programmers, forget about being an entrepreneur, but there is always a low-paying job and a cubical at amazon.com where you can fix bugs in the Ruby runtime.

Replying to #21:
open source isn’t artificially lowering the price of
commodity software; the price drop is entirely natural.
The marginal cost per copy of software
is near zero, so if there’s a way to develop software
that sells at that price, it’s going to happen. The
market abhors inefficiencies.

Open source *does* threaten
established software models — but only for
commodity software where there are enough
users to attract enough user-developers.
Niche/custom applications are safe from the onslaught,
I think. And that’s where most of the money in software
development is.

(The situation for commodity apps
reminds me of manufacturing… the US
used to be king, then Asia learned how to do it.
Lots of people in the US complained about that,
but in the end, Asia is doing a much better job of
building things like cars and computers, and
you can’t really fault them for competing effectively.)

“While they work on other projects as well, these people are paid to refine Linux as a whole, often in a way that matches up with their employers’ long-term goals.
— Ashlee Vance ”

I don’t quite understand your meaning. The fact that companies like Google can, and do, hire open source developers to improve open source products is one of the beauties of open source software. They get a great piece of software that they can tailor to their needs, and in turn the community gets a set of dedicated developers to improve the product. Improving the product _is_ the long term goal.

If, however, you’re hinting that hiring the developers causes those developers to forgo the best interest of the software project in favor of their companies long term goals, then I think you’re dead wrong. In turn I’d kindly ask you for some examples where this has happened and the community has taken it without forking or abandoning the project.

What jobs? Those are going overseas, thanks to osama bin hussein or better known as the One.

I switched to ubuntu (jaunty) because

1) I was tired of rebooting on every update
2) I was tired of having to defrag my harddrive
3) I was tired of having to run an antivirus and firewall on my home PC, and it clashing with other software.

And no, don’t go with the antivirus myths for linux because of its rarity or small user base. It’s because if you get a remote hacker on a normal desktop installation, it would not destroy or eat away at your operating system.